Could teachers be replaced with robots?

[noblegiraffe]

This is increasingly being suggested as a solution to the critical lack of teachers, particularly at secondary school.

My general position is that we saw how pupils are not motivated to learn when left to their own devices at home over lockdown. As a teacher, a lot of my day is spent getting kids to do the work, in various ways.

This blog by Becky Allen "Will students feel motivated to work for the AI-masters?' is an interesting discussion of the issue. It refers to Animal Crossing making you feel guilty for neglecting your characters, the Duolingo owl encouraging you to keep a streak and so on. Personally, I find closing the rings on my Apple Watch the only thing that has motivated me to do regular exercise.

But what these things all have in common is that they are things that the student has opted into in the first place. Presumably there was some initial motivation on their part that just needs a nudge to keep going.

An important part of teaching is building relationships with the pupils on a human level. Can a student build a relationship with an AI? Well, definitely. But on a widespread enough scale for it to be more effective than humans interaction? Not sure.

However, would it be better than no teacher? Most likely.

https://rebeccaallen.co.uk/2024/01/13/artificial-incentives-will-students-feel-motivated-to-work-for-their-ai-masters/

Really.
I think it could work.

I think the whole idea of school needs changing because it’s basically, not for purpose for the modern world free childcare - too many overhangs from preparing for factory type work.

I think lockdown was absolutely ridiculous how some schools were treating their kids expecting them to sit in front of the computer all day in lessons. And showed how out of touch.

There was a big move to Home Ed after lockdown as lots of parents saw how happy their kids were to not be in school and how motivated they were to learn and boring the curriculum and teaching is.

To quote OP” My general position is that we saw how pupils are not motivated to learn when left to their own devices at home over lockdown. As a teacher, a lot of my day is spent getting kids to do the work, in various ways.” Schools basically set them boring busy work or expected too much. And also didn’t factor in the fact we were living through a global emergency.

I think the whole idea of an education needs to shift because telling kids they need to do well in school so they can get a good job and the over focus on getting good grades in certain subjects detrimental to the learning and empowerment of all children. Because not all will get those things or value those things.
Some need to learn via practical skills that schools just aren’t equipped to provide. We currently provide half an education at best, to less that half the population of kids because the curriculum and provision is made to benchmark and measure schools and kids against each other rather than actually provide them with something useful.

Do some people really not understand the value of actual human interaction and group experiences?

Of course we do but do you understand the actual experiences of many, many children in school now?

One of 30+
Alright if you understand the whole class input but if you get stuck you'll wait all lesson because one teacher is trying desperately to manage the angry child who won't sit, the 3 EAL children who didn't understand anything and the handful of children with SEND who all need completely different things in order to stay regulated.
And that's if they even have a teacher because they might have a TA, supply or Mrs. Smith from the office because their teacher is off sick with stress or she left and school couldn't fill her vacancy.
Then, when your child does get some of the teacher's time it turns out that the teacher is a PE specialist attempting to deliver a year 8 maths lesson and doesn't understand it either.

So yes, actual human interaction is brilliant, nobody is suggesting robots and ai is better than good quality human teaching. They're suggesting it might just help a bit with the dire situation we have now.

Given how often there are issues with technology in our school and only re.ote support or half termly site visits, I foresee a bunch of malfunctioning robots languishing in a cupboard awaiting repair......

There is no shortage of teachers, problem is a lot are just no longer teaching!, I did it for 18 years, got fed up with the red tape (not the kids or the core job) and moved on.

I'm 44 and know many who I worked with who have quit and others who are actively looking to go ASAP.

Discipline has got very bad in many schools since covid, can't see how an AI robot can deal with that!

It’s interesting you see “study only what you enjoy” as reducing the curriculum and not expanding it.

I experimented during Covid with flipped classrooms and it wasn't a great success. The idea was to get the students to do the rote stuff, so watching an online lecture (split into two short parts, not a long droning hour!), read a paper, answer a little quiz at home, and then spend the 90 minutes we have together discussing stuff, enhancing study skills, going to the next level of analysis.

It didn't work at all with my reasonably bright RG students, a few took to it well and the majority didn't engage with the pre-prepared materials. When asked to give feedback, all said they wanted to go back to the old structure, which was me talking in a lecture style and them taking notes, then a one hour seminar discussion, with structured questions.

Most said they wanted face to face contact.

This is not true either, as when given the old style face to face contact, only about 50% show up, if that!

I have found the Covid cluster of few years even more disengaged than normal, they want the convenience of online, they want the interaction of face to face, but some are doing very little indeed to engage. The exception are the motivated bright students at the front who get a lot of time and energy and enjoy themselves.

I think a lot of people think AI is more advanced than it is- I agree it's great for rote stuff and checking vocab and accessing basic information, we can already do all that, or even run stuff through grammar checkers. It's not clever though and adaptive or even very interesting. ChatGPT turns out utterly dull and dated stuff (it will catch up eventually).

I agree that a good teacher, using some AI tools, would be the best way forward for now, but humans need social contact and human socialization. I am not convinced by AI in therapy, or as a doctor's receptionist either, because what happens is the literate well people get well served, and those who are disabled, mentally ill, poorer and don't have the confidence to interact, lacking literacy and internet skills, people with cognitive decline, dementia, brain injury, drop out of the system and get crapper care, that's already the case.

I think the problem with 'study what you enjoy' is the assumption that kids are turned off school because they are studying things that they don't enjoy, and not that they just don't enjoy studying.

I’m suggesting it could be better than teaching/teachers.
Mainly because if the kids say turn up to a maths lesson. There would be no requirement for them all to be learning the same thing at the same time in the same way. Any adult in the room is now a facilitator and not a teacher.
If they are a maths teacher then awesome.
But either way they can help students figure out the best way they learn.

I think its a long way off being possible, lets consider the efforts of the UK government owned post office and a huge japanese computer company to develop a comparatively simple, point of sale system, and how badly that has ended up!

Can you imagine the scale of cock up it could be putting AI in classrooms en masse!

Kid are by nature inquisitive, what has school/society done to turn them off.
See- Naomi Fisher
Peter Grey
Sir Ken Robinson et al.

Why when a 14 y:o is dead set on joining his fathers building business do we make them sit through all their lessons as normal and not do a split of learning through doing of practical skills and teach English and maths that way? Because the system is all set up for the need to benchmark pupils and schools against each other.
That kid is more than likely wasting time and completely disengaged from learning.

The really clever kids who the school can’t support because of class numbers spend all their time doing busy work rather than further work. In fact most school work is busy work.

Bloody Ken Robinson. You need knowledge to be creative.

Why when a 14 y:o is dead set on joining his fathers building business do we make them sit through all their lessons as normal and not do a split of learning through doing of practical skills and teach English and maths that way?

I have to say, the kids who are dead set on joining their father's building business (and I've had plenty) generally use that as a reason to argue that they don't need to be doing maths or English at all.

And the problem with the 14 year old being dead set on joining their father's building business is that if you only focus on setting them up to join a builders, you are closing an awful lot of other doors to that kid if they then change their mind.

Agreed, they might be better suited to a career in IT or law.

I think we’re conflating 2 things.

What is best for the children and the competence of government.

Given to the right company this could all be implemented before September across the country. I agree that the government would not choose the right company - mainly because the kids and education wouldn’t be their main reason for doing it.

There is a shift to different views of school - seen by an increase in home education and in the setting up of the virtual schools and the ones where pupils attend one day a week for sports and group activities.

Anything the truly make an improvement for the kids would require a massive culture shift of how schools are set up and run and I don’t think the current government are capable at all of doing it.

So what is best for some kids is to not be in school right now.

And everyone else is scrambling to bring in bigger carrots and bigger sticks to keep both students and teachers in current schools set up.

I guess it depends whether you consider the main purpose of education to be training up future cogs in the corporate machine, or whether you think it's about
the development of the human species.

We need to make the distinction between "training" and "education". Education should offer opportunities to use your brain in ways that you DON'T in everyday life. It should expand your horizons. It should inspire. As a (human!) maths teacher myself, only humans can truly educate other humans. But I'm sure robots could have a good go at teaching kids how to solve a quadratic equation.

^I guess it depends whether you consider the main purpose of education to be training up future cogs in the cooperate machine, or whether you think it's about
the development of the human species.^

There are a lot of people who complain that they (or their kids) have to learn Shakespeare because 'when am I ever going to have to use this in real life'.

One thing that this thread hasn't discussed so far is that if teachers' jobs are being replaced by robots, so are everyone else's.

In which case, if the aspect of schools which are preparing children for the workforce is removed and your view of education is purely utilitarian, would kids need to go to school at all?

Hmm. Surely you need a good grasp of both maths (e.g. calculating measurements accurately) and English (writing quotes/emails/or even small claims applications for non-payers) to run a building company effectively? Yes, okay, you can hire someone to do those things, but if the maths doesn't add up with your income then you have to do it yourself.

Teen brains are very black and white, and lazy, so if they can rationalise that they don't 'have to' do something because x reason, that's the end of the discussion in their mind. Unless the adults around them show them the value in what they're learning, even when it's hard or boring.

Can AI do this? I'm not sure. e.g. Chat GPT can be persuasive in its own way, because it's not 'real'. When I use it, sometimes the answers it gives triggers thoughts in my own mind that go in a direction I hadn't previously considered. I can sort of see a teen saying, 'I don't need maths, I'm not going to uni, I'm gonna work in my dad's building company,' and an AI robot making a good case as to why that's exactly the reason they need to be good at maths

youngones1

At least robots don't go on strike and call in sick.

Someone has their panties in a bunch.
As for the rest, I look forward to the complaints about AI and robots being programmed to teach non facts (gender identity anyone ) and producing automatons with no push back from teachers.

Also the loss of practical subjects would be interesting to watch.

You teach them through their want of joining that business. Thats not all you teach them. Thats how you reach them- where they are.
You equip them with the maths and English through teaching about building. In a practical way.

And you’re not closing a lot of doors, you’re more than likely closing less doors because they have a very good grasp of certain skills proven, and they paid much more attention to maths/English when learning about it through building.
You want them to learn to write a report, you get them to write a site report not a book report etc etc You make it relevant to them and reach them.

The problem is schools think GCSEs are the bees knees when they’re not. For many reasons. And even if they are, an engaged adult can get one faster than an unenthusiastic child.

Many years ago I watched a short documentary about a U.S school that was short of funds and also having issues recruiting Maths teachers and they started to use the free KHAN Academy resources online with a few "supervisors" in a hall to keep discipline and help with tech issues. This allowed the school to a have a split with reduced teacher taught classes and cheap online "embedding"sessions. I could see this model being adopted as a way to save costs rather than full AI tuition. The school claimed engagement and attainment had risen and the children interviewed liked how calm and quiet the online sessions were and how they could work at their own pace. Hmm..

I strongly feel that expecting children to stay quiet and focused for up to 7 hours a day is just wrong and like wrangling cats. Long school days are there to suit the needs of employers not the children. We need more funding in schooling and an over haul of curriculum and the role of schools. They need to be more holistic, with smaller classes so teachers can be more responsive to needs and more nurturing. But that is just not going to happen with state schooling.

The school claimed engagement and attainment had risen and the children interviewed liked how calm and quiet the online sessions were and how they could work at their own pace.

My experience of children in computer rooms is that they see them as 'doss' lessons and they spend most of their time on coolmathsgames.com arguing that it counts as maths, or watching football on youtube, or googling funny pictures of cats.

The 'getting kids to do the work' issue is made much more difficult by the kids having access to the internet.

And you’re not closing a lot of doors, you’re more than likely closing less doors because they have a very good grasp of certain skills proven, and they paid much more attention to maths/English when learning about it through building.

Again, you are making the assumption that they actually care about working in their dad's building company because they are interested in building and not because they are using it as an excuse to not do any work at all because why do qualifications matter when they have a sure fire job to go to.

The problem is schools think GCSEs are the bees knees when they’re not. For many reasons. And even if they are, an engaged adult can get one faster than an unenthusiastic child.

Years ago, we ran a whole Alternative Provision in school for the students who wanted to be builders etc. It was highly successful - and those students did English, Maths and Science too.

Then the goalposts were moved by government and suddenly, the things we were doing which worked would actively count against the school.

Now, it's easy to argue that we should have said "actually, this works for our kids, so off you pop with your judgements."

But as has so clearly been shown lately, the impact of a poor ofsted one word judgement is substantial, sustained, and can be devastating.

Do we think GCSEs are the bee's knees? Not necessarily. Can we do much about it? No.

We had a student a few years ago who got just 2 GCSEs at grade 4 and above. On paper, that looks pretty poor. In reality, that was a massive achievement. But people outside are really only interested in the numbers. And that's a travesty not of our making.

You can teach them history skills through history of building/plumbing/types of material/structural differences.
They don’t need to learn the history of revolutionary France just because the syllabus says so.

Geography - can investigate different structure locations. Etc etc.

Its so easy to meet a child where they are, it’s not easy to with a restrictive school/curriculum/desired outcomes.

You can still have a shared school community and do lots of compassionate ethos building and human to human inspirational things. Without everyone having to learn the same curriculum.

Too much is about control and losing control.

Absolutely benchmarking/government political footballs/Ofsted are the underlying issue.
I do know schools hands are tied completely.

But I also know there are also schools and people in schools who agree with the govt or are so stuck in this way they would struggle to see the wood for the trees.

I had a BTEC science class who had worked through 2 yrs of all their coursework (bottom set lots of SEN and EAL) - done sooo well. Learned so much and really been engaged with completing it all. And we’d finished the CW and got it all marked. And then the school decided, half way through Y11, those kids should instead sit the GCSE exam, as it would be better for the schools numbers. Absolutely heartbroken for them kids.
I then had to try teach them the whole GCSE syllabus which was very different in a few months. Shudders.

But the problem is still that this requires the system to change.

The same as MrsHamlet we had a great alt provision set up prior to an ofsted change of direction and gove's massive fuck up.
We had a whole range of vocational studies and some more interesting academic ones before we were forced to slim down our provision.

Now every one has to fit in to the progress 8, a system that is not fit for purpose but then gove knew that he was pointing his academic provision at only 20% of the pupils.